The European Space Agency has inaugurated this Friday in Sweden its first space launch port on the European continent, which will allow greater European sovereignty in space matters and address the high demand for satellite launches.
«It’s a great moment for Europe. It is a great moment for the European space industry. The first orbital launch site on the European continent. This spaceport offers an independent European gateway to space and is exactly the infrastructure we need,» said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the inauguration of this infrastructure located 40 kilometers from the city of Kiruna in the Lapland region.
Europe’s main spaceport is located in the northeast of South America in French Guiana, the overseas department of France. In 1964, the French government chose Kourou, among 14 other sites, as a launch base that became part of the European Space Agency in the 1970s.
As explained by the German conservative, this port would make it possible to put small satellites into orbit, generating «immense benefits». «It is important to launch these satellites again and again, to have the capacity to reuse them, to test them,» she said, stressing that it would improve Europe’s capacity to prevent and warn of climatic phenomena and increase European security.
In the midst of the war in Ukraine, Von der Leyen defended the usefulness of these satellites in the war context, pointing out that the Ukrainian Army monitors the movements of Russian troops thanks to this technology.
For all these reasons, he advanced that he will present a European space strategy for security and defense, with which he intends to increase the resistance of European space infrastructures and strengthen shared European resources.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
